


Sleeping Beauty

by Jean Genie (Su_Abeille)



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, FIx It, Fairy Tale Elements, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Season 3 AU, Season 3 RetCon, Season 3 rewrite, The Day Tennyson Died, Victor Frankenstein & Vanessa Ives - Freeform, myth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 03:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5359436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Su_Abeille/pseuds/Jean%20Genie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’d fallen into a deep sleep, like the princess behind the briar hedge, waiting for her prince to come back to her.</p><p>A prequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/351620">The Lovers, my season 3 AU series,</a> but can also be read on its own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleeping Beauty

“The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?”  
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

Victor had sensed it, heard her voice in his mind. 

He’d been locked inside a terrible unending dream for so long. He had seen and heard Vanessa in a boundless series of images and sounds before, after, during, still. Nothing had enough coherency for him to divine meaning from let alone assign it a name. She’d be there, whispering in his ear, and then the noise would come in, the blinding white in his veins, surging through his body, and the voice would disappear, forgotten. 

Victor knew that Sir Malcolm had gone to Africa, taking Sembene’s body with him. He hadn’t seen Vanessa for a month now, maybe two. He had no idea what the date was, how long he’d been held prisoner in the narcotic prison of his own making. He had been alone and undisturbed for some time, visited not by the creatures who tortured him, nor the people who had shown care for him. If he had been sober, he may have noticed this absence, made the effort to at least go and call on Vanessa. But he’d assumed that she and Mr. Chandler had gone off somewhere together. That passing thought had been all he’d given to her before pressing the needle into his arm again.

This time the whisper was different. It was Vanessa’s voice, as discernible and real as if her mouth was next to his ear. And she said only two words.

“I’m sorry.”

He’d been jerked out of his drugged stupor at this, suddenly reeling into reality. He could feel the floor under his body, the sunlight piercing his eyes, the smell of his sick around him. But all he could hear was Vanessa saying those two words to him, and he knew, on some instinctive level, that something was terribly wrong.

The adrenaline of this realization mixed with the sense of purpose that came from his years training to be a doctor. Being thrust into an emergency had always made him clear headed, focused, no matter how high he was. He knew exactly where he needed to go and was on his way there within the hour.

When he arrived at Sir Malcolm’s home he noticed immediately that all light in the house was gone, that it had the eerie, undisturbed look of a house that’s been empty for some time. No one responded to his knocks so he went around through the cellar entrance, coming up from there into the house. Doors were closed and dust lay on the banisters. The air was stale, as if no windows had been opened in some time. Plates of barely eaten food laid at the top of the stairs, molding. Shattered glass was scattered across the hallway. A rag lay limp next to it, long turned brown with the stain of old dried blood.

He moved quickly to Vanessa’s room but found it empty, strikingly so. There was no sign of disturbance. The blankets were smooth on the bed, the desk clean of any papers, the ashes in the fireplace from a fire long since burned out revealing the half melted figure of the crucified Christ. 

Victor felt his heart start to beat fast from fear. 

“Vanessa?” He asked, almost scared at what or who would respond. 

He walked out of her room and noticed then that the door next to hers was slightly ajar. He knew that this is where Mr. Chandler had been staying, and his fear heightened even more. What had happened to him, to Vanessa, to both of them? Was it possession again? The devil come back to torment and destroy?

He gingerly pressed the door open to reveal a darkened room, shades lowered. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw the disarray. Clothing strewn, furniture overturned, mirrors shattered. Yet everything had this sense of stillness, as if they’d been like this for an age now, forgotten. 

His eyes finally crept across the room to see the figure on the bed. Like a wraith, pale, alarmingly thin, Vanessa lay unmoving on the strewn sheets, haloed by a blood stain around her body. 

There was deep, ragged cuts on the inside of each wrist, repeated, vicious marks that had been driven in over and over and now leaked blood very slowly. She was colourless, her lips almost blue. She was almost completely exsanguinated, and lay there like a cold, lifeless marble statue of a woman, eternally locked in her slumber. 

 

Victor had been forced to take her to the hospital. She was unconscious, barely breathing, and needed a blood transfusion immediately. By the next day, she was alive, but barely. She was suffering from starvation and extensive what seemed to be self inflicted wounds all over her body. Realizing this danger, that her life hung in the balance, he had gone to the Explorers club and sent a message to Sir Malcolm.

Yet within the week, Sir Malcolm appeared in the doorway of Vanessa’s room. 

“How did you-?” Victor started but the older man, whose eyes were fixed on the frail woman in the bed before him, interrupted him.

“She told me. She said-”

“I’m sorry.” They said together and then looked at each other in wide eyed fear.

 

Two more weeks passed and Vanessa was still in a deep unconsciousness. The two men stayed by her bedside at all times, trying to determine what had happened. Neither knew where Ethan was, nor how long Vanessa had been in the house, alone. They both believed that this must be the possession taking over her again, and left alone, it had festered to this. 

Victor felt sick with guilt at abandoning her. She cared so much for him, was kind to him in a way no one had been since the death of his mother. And he’d abandoned her to fight off a danger that could and very well may kill her. 

He went back eventually to look through the mess of the room he’d found her in for some kind of clue about what had been happening. Victor found a letter. It was well worn, refolded and put away and then taken out and read over and over. He started to read it but couldn’t finish, sensing immediately the intimacy in the words. He gave it Sir Malcolm, who dared to read it. He watched the older man’s face for some sign of what it said, but he only seemed to look even more bereft. 

“Oh my darling girl.” Sir Malcolm murmured to Vanessa’s unhearing ear. “I believe I know what I must do, Doctor.”

 

It had taken him days to find out just what had happened to Mr. Chandler. Having some pull at Scotland Yard helped, eventually he was able to find out that he’d been extradited to America. Sir Malcolm finally found an address and sent a message, urgently, in the hopes that Ethan might read it and be able to respond. 

Many days passed with no word back, and as the days stretched into weeks, Vanessa lay still sleeping. Both of the men knew now why this had happened, why Vanessa had fallen into such utter despair. All of the people in her life were gone, Victor, Sir Malcolm, Sembene, but most importantly Ethan. Those weeks before they had all been parted, she’d been leaning on him more and more. He’d become a source of strength, a protector. Left alone, without the people she cared about and the God she’d trusted to give her suffering a purpose, she’d wasted away.

Vanessa danced on the line between life and death. She was so weak and lifeless, the fire of her spirit gone. Victor tried in vain, trying anything to revive her, to bring her back, but she still lay sleeping. 

 

After a countless amount of weeks both of the men were at the end of their hope that she might become well again, that she might wake up and be herself. Victor knew that she was near the end. He could see all the signs that it was just around the bend for her, and raged at the idea of losing another person he loved to death. 

He sat next to Vanessa’s bed in the dark of one long night, his head in his hands, waiting for death to arrive. Sir Malcolm sat in the corner, turned away, out of fear of the shadow that was to slip into the room at any moment. They were both silent and still, filled with fear and dread.

“Vanessa.” 

The tall form was shadowed, dark and hovering, but it was not death at the door, calling her name. 

It was Ethan, slowly walking towards her. His eyes were transfixed, his face a mixture of fear and pain. He knelt down next to the bed, reaching out his large hand to trail fingers down the waxy paleness of her face, over the bones sticking out against hollow cheeks. 

Tears swam in his eyes as he took her hand in his, raising the limp fingers to press to his lips. 

“Come back to me.” He said in a halting, fearful whisper.

He leaned forward then and with the utmost tenderness kissed her pale, unmoving lips. As he pressed his forehead to hers, his eyes slipped shut and a tear rolled down his cheek to land on hers, anointing her with his love.

Victor felt he could look no more. This love, this intimacy, it pierced through him. It was beyond anything he’d ever seen. This was the love that the Romantic poets had written of, a love that spanned time, space, even life and death. 

They were all silent then, eyes closed to death waiting around the corner. And then Victor heard it again. Heard Vanessa’s voice in the darkness, pulling all of them from this horrible, never ending dream. 

“Ethan?”

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the [The Lovers series AU.](http://archiveofourown.org/series/351620) There is a prequel to this series called [Sleeping Beauty](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5359436) as well as a sequel called [Wedding.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6628774/chapters/15168202) There are also two short stories set in the universe called [Diamonds and Pearls](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6628774/chapters/15951589) and [Watching a Beauty Woman Laugh,](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6899806) followed by a two part story called [Grief.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7362892) The series ends with [Grandpa.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7332376)


End file.
